Lodge, David (1935-…), is a British novelist and literary critic. Most of Lodge’s novels are partly autobiographical satirical comedies, set in universities. His novels exploit literary devices such as allusion and parody. Much of Lodge’s working life has been spent in the academic world.
Lodge’s novels include The Picturegoers (1960); The British Museum Is Falling Down (1965); Changing Places (1975) and its sequel Small World (1984); How Far Can You Go (published in the United States as Souls & Bodies, 1980); Nice Work (1988); Therapy (1995); and Thinks (2001). In Changing Places and Small World, Lodge describes the adventures of Philip Swallow, a shy young academic, and introduces his readers to modern critical theories of literature such as post-structuralism and deconstruction. In Nice Work, he compares the life of an industrialist and an academic. How Far Can You Go won the 1980 Whitbread Book of the Year award. The novel portrays Roman Catholics struggling to resolve some of the moral problems of modern life.
David John Lodge was born on Jan. 28, 1935, in Dulwich, London, and studied English literature at University College, London. In 1960, he became an assistant lecturer at the University of Birmingham. He was professor of modern English literature at Birmingham from 1976 to 1987. His many works of literary criticism and theory include The Language of Fiction (1966), The Novelist at the Crossroads, and Other Essays on Fiction and Criticism (1971, revised 1984), Write On: Occasional Essays (1986), and After Bakhtin: Essays in Fiction and Criticism (1990).
